Charismatic Leaders’ Fellowship (CLF) had its yearly meeting in Bradenton, Florida, at Gerald Deristine’s Christian Retreat Center, on February 24 thru the 27th. CLF is the descendent of the Charismatic Concerns Committee (CCC), an important group of charismatic and Pentecostal leaders formed in the 1970s to monitor, advise and correct the disparate currents and personalities of the Charismatic Renewal. For instance, the CCC was instrumental is correcting in the “Florida Four,” and their discipleship extremism before it spread widely within the Renewal.

Michael Brown speaking at CLF 2014

For this year’s conference the main speaker was Dr. Michael Brown, who has become the ad hoc voice of the Charismatic Renewal to the media. His daily radio talk show is nationally syndicated and attracts and even increasing audience. Dr. Brown, who converted in his youth from a drug-driven, non-observant Jew, is also a noted apologist of the Gospel to the Jews.

Dr. Brown gave two talks at the CLF conference, both reflecting recent books he has published. The first talk was on the “hyper-grace” controversy which has broken out in recent years among charismatic churches, principally those influenced by the Word of Faith movement. This grace teaching exalts the role of God’s grace and mercy to the point that the Christian no longer needs to experience guilt for sin nor repentance after salvation. Similarly, the Old Testament, whose rules define sin, is considered irrelevant by certain hyper-grace teachers. I and Dr. Brown agree that hyper-grace is a reappearance of the old Marcion heresy—the 2nd Century heretic who denied that the Old Testament was scripture.

Dr. Brown stressed that there is much insight on the grace of God in hyper-grace writers, even as they drift into extremes. Dr. Brown has striven for, and in fact established, communications with some of the hyper-grace authors. His book on the subject is: Hyper-Grace: Exposing the Danger of the Modern Grace Message (Lake Mary: Charisma House, 2014).

Dr. Brown’s second talk described John MacArthur’s self-declared “war” on Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Renewal in, Strange Fire. Pneuma Review readers are mostly aware of this controversy and have access to multiple reviews of MacArthur’s awful work on this website. Dr. Brown’s book length critique of MacArthur’s Strange Fire is his own Authentic Fire, a very fine work that maintains a generous tone towards MacArthur throughout. My review of Dr. Brown’s book is also found on this website. It should be noted that the Catholic participants at the CLF had not much followed either the MacArthur or hyper-grace controversies and were both informed and appalled by them. Catholics generally have much wisdom on the issue of post-salvation sin, and the hyper-grace position seemed incredible to them.

I was honored to have been given the opportunity to do two presentations at this year’s CLF. The first was titled “What is left for Pentecostals and Charismatics to do?” I first suggested that Christians of all denominations are negligent in their intercessions for the conversion of Islam. What is the worth of all the books and teachings on power intercession and territorial spirits if we don’t put it to use?

My second talk was on the importance of recognizing the “discernment heresies” that have plagued the Church through the ages, but are often ignored: Gnosticism, Phariseeism and Sadduceeism. I pointed out that concentration on the doctrinal facets of heresy has incapacitated the Church in recognizing the attitudes of discernment that restrict revival. For instance, Phariseeism and Sadduceeism combined to destroy the Scottish revivals of the 18th Century. [1]